Profound post. Worth reading. Gives me much to think about, as Mark always does. Snip follows:

The hydra-like insurgency in Iraq has drawn attention to the political conundrum faced by state authorities when facing unconventional opponents. Whether they come in the form of traditional guerillas, transnational terrorist networks and even looser " leaderless resistance" movements that attract superempowered individuals, State actors often face the damned if you do, damned if you don't cycle of reaction and retaliation. Drifting into a seemingly permanent loss of initiative, the state allows the non-state actors to " write the script" in the political and moral dimensions of the conflict, creating strategic losses even out of tactical and operational victories.

This has led some military theorists of the 4GW school to make particularly gloomy forecasts in regard to not only Iraq, but toward all "state-building" interventions and even the long-term stability of the states of the Core. 4GW and "Open-Source " warfare of Global Guerillaism are inarguably very effective and these methods of warfare, when a State reacts conventionally and with political ineptitude, place the very legitimacy of the state itself is in jeopardy.

It would be a grave mistake however to conclude that these forms of warfare represent a magic anti-state bullet. They do not. 4GW forces can lose wars and have. Much of the current track record of 4GW success rests primarily upon the recurring failure of their state opponents to deliberately maximize their existing advantages and secondarily to develop and employ countervailing tactics. In other words, these represent failures of strategic vision on the part of statesmen and commanders who get caught up in the small-picture dynamics of the scenario rather than directing their attention to shaping the scenario itself. Some quotations to keep in mind here: